Inequality has our planet down, the veteran analyst Juliet Schor believes, but not out. She’s seeing more of us working for alternatives to mindless consumerism — and the failing system that generates it.

Our top reads

Twin Peaks Planetby Paul Krugman

New York Times, January 2, 2015

Between our world’s twin peaks — the ever-richer global elite and the rising Chinese middle class — lies what we might call the valley of despond: the stagnating incomes of the advanced-country working classes. (source)

The Rise and Rise of the Top 0.1 Percentby Jordan Weissmann

Slate, December 31, 2014

New research unveiled in 2014 has solved the puzzle in our statistics on economic inequality. (source)

“The form of law which I propose would be as follows: In a state which is desirous of being saved from the greatest of all plagues—not faction, but rather distraction—there should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor, again, excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil . . . Now the legislator should determine what is to be the limit of poverty or of wealth.”

Many individuals helped construct neoclassical economics, often with financial support from the robber barons and their successors. I will focus on two: in the United States, John Bates Clark (1847-1938), and in Europe, Vilfredo Pareto (1848 to 1923).